San Antonio's biggest water users revealed

Top 100 consume as much as 1,611 households.

Updated 10:28 am, Thursday, December 27, 2012

Photo: JERRY LARA, San Antonio Express-News

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No. 2 on the list of top water users in San Antonio is former Spurs player and now team commentator Sean Elliott, seen here praticing his golf game at his home in 2011. His seven-month total came to more than 1.7 million gallons.

No. 2 on the list of top water users in San Antonio is former Spurs player and now team commentator Sean Elliott, seen here praticing his golf game at his home in 2011. His seven-month total came to more than

Harvey Najim speaks at the ribbon cutting ceremony for the Dr. Leslie Parks Education center at Seton Home in 2011. Najim, among the city's most prolific philanthropists and successful businessmen, doesn't like being on the list of top water users.

Harvey Najim speaks at the ribbon cutting ceremony for the Dr. Leslie Parks Education center at Seton Home in 2011. Najim, among the city's most prolific philanthropists and successful businessmen, doesn't like

Bruce Bowen does stride work outside his home in 2010. Bowen's former home used 1.62 million gallons. According to public records, the 14-bath home was foreclosed on last year by University Federal Credit Union, which has it listed for sale at $3.9 million on Realtor.com.

Bruce Bowen does stride work outside his home in 2010. Bowen's former home used 1.62 million gallons. According to public records, the 14-bath home was foreclosed on last year by University Federal Credit

The past two years of drought have left San Antonio's water supplies strained like never before, and the forecast for substantial rain in the next six months doesn't look promising.

Without a significant shift in the weather, the city will have to enforce unparalleled outdoor watering restrictions this spring to ensure that it can meet the basic needs of residents and businesses.

The city's drought ordinance sets no specific limit on gallons per household, but the San Antonio Water System puts a priority on persuading the biggest residential water users to cut their consumption because most of the water goes to nonessential landscape irrigation.

The combined water use of the city's top 100 residential users from May to November alone equaled that of 1,611 average households, according to SAWS records.

“If just one of them cuts their use by 20 percent, that is the same as many, many homes,” said Karen Guz, SAWS' director of conservation.

The list of 100 biggest water users this year includes about a dozen who were on the list in 2011, when the San Antonio Express-News last published it, including Harvey Najim, among the city's most prolific philanthropists and successful businessmen.

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“That's a list I don't like being on,” Najim said. “But I have five water features.... I can't help it if it is hot and dry in the summer.”

The 675,000 gallons of water he used from May to November put him at No. 94 on the list. He jokingly offered a reporter $200 in cash to leave him out of the story.

By law, SAWS has to release the names but not the addresses on the Top 100 list when it is requested under the state open records statute.

It is not clear exactly which property is No. 1 this year; the SAWS account is listed as the SAKI 2001 Trust.

According to Bexar County deed records, the trust owns four properties in the Dominion bought from Carla and Michael Garces, who is founder of Pricewatch.com, an Internet price comparison company. One of those homes used more than 2 million gallons of water from May to November, when Stage 2 drought restrictions were in effect, limiting outdoor watering to one day a week.

Weilbacher & Associates, an accounting firm, said it receives the water bills sent to the SAKI 2001 Trust but declined to comment.

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Lots of gallons

The Top 10 residential water users of the San Antonio Water System from May to November, with name of account and total gallons:

SAKI 2001 Trust: 2,033,336

Sean Elliott: 1,730,355

University Federal Credit Union: 1,622,629

James D. Ellis: 1,524,628

Ronald Eugene Bartell: 1,439,344

Adriana Gutierrez: 1,296,457

Rick Moore: 1,204,441

Dan-Allen Hughes Jr.: 1,183,494

Patty Hannigan: 1,176,013

Alexander & Zweibach: 1,171,525

No. 2 on the list is former Spurs player and now team commentator Sean Elliott. His seven-month total came to more than 1.7 million gallons.

Not far behind, at 1.62 million gallons, is the former home of another former Spur, Bruce Bowen. According to public records, the 14-bath home was foreclosed on last year by University Federal Credit Union, which has it listed for sale at $3.9 million on Realtor.com.

Elliott and his wife, Claudia Zapata, an Express-News health columnist, own a home on five acres that includes a man-made lake with catfish, according to luxury real estate magazine NHOME. Elliott also was on the big-users list in 2011.

“As people who value water conversation efforts in our community, my wife and I are absolutely mortified to be on this list,” he wrote in an email. “We do abide by any and all watering restrictions and suspect a possible irrigation leak on our property that we are resolving. In any case, we obviously have to do better. Much, much better.”

Because of the large potential savings that the Top 100 water users represent, SAWS offers them free consultations to evaluate their irrigation systems and incentives to change to less water-intensive landscaping.

According to SAWS, half the city's peak summer water use goes to outdoor irrigation and is why SAWS' plan for getting through a severe drought depends on reducing it. By ordinance, SAWS can limit only outdoor water use, Guz said.

Having entered the third year of a drought that started in October 2010, San Antonio has never faced conditions like it does now.

In the past 60 years, San Antonio has seen only two droughts stretch into a third year: the 1982-84 drought and the 1949-1957 drought, which is the worst on record. During both, San Antonio's demand for water was lower and its access to pumping from the Edwards Aquifer was unlimited.

The aquifer is already nearly 18 feet below average, and Medina Lake is less than 10 percent full. SAWS is preparing for the lake to go dry next year and its pumping rights from the Edwards reduced by 30 percent or more, according to planning documents.

For the first time, it might have to impose Stage 3 watering restrictions in the spring, a step it narrowly avoided this year. Outdoor watering with a sprinkler, soaker hose or spray irrigation would be restricted to once every other week.

While SAWS is working on increasing water supplies, each project is more expensive than the last. In the next five years, SAWS estimates that it would need to raise the average monthly water bill, which is for 7,788 gallons, by $11.78, just for water projects, not counting higher sewer rates.

If the drought persists, San Antonio could reach Stage 4 restrictions by summer, which would add a surcharge of 46.5 cents per 100 gallons on all use above 12,717 gallons a month.

Former customers of the Bexar Metropolitan Water District, who already pay more than most SAWS customers, would avoid the surcharge because the merger of the two utilities' rates is not complete. The surcharge should not raise the cost of indoor water use because a family of four needs fewer than 6,000 gallons a month for household needs, according to SAWS, and even less with high-efficiency appliances.

By comparison, those at the bottom of the big-users list, who average about 95,000 gallons a month, would see their monthly bill go from about $800 a month to $1,200, depending on several factors.

For those in the Top 10, who average a little more than 200,000 gallons a month, their bills will go from around $1,700 a month to $2,500.

“The vanity lakes (will) become much more expensive to keep,” Guz said.